


Floaty Green Men

by Pardra



Category: Rockman | Mega Man - All Media Types, 流星のロックマン | Mega Man Star Force
Genre: First Meetings, Gen, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-16
Updated: 2020-11-16
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:36:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27585538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pardra/pseuds/Pardra
Summary: Hope and Omega-Xis meet unexpectedly in the middle of the night. It doesn’t go well.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 28





	Floaty Green Men

At 1:46 AM, Hope Stelar rose from her bed and went to the kitchen with a single thought in her head. Food. She had worked a little longer that day than she was supposed to, and the change had thrown her off. She’d missed dinner with the intention of making it up at breakfast, but her stomach had other ideas.

  
  


  
  


With a gentle _thwmp, t_ he door swung open silently on its hinges, filling the dark kitchen with a low hum and wispy tendrils of cool air. The pale light did very little to illuminate the room, stretching upward and directly behind her in a weak halo. Hope squinted her eyes against the sudden brightness and leaned forward to look into the fridge. There was enough to make a sandwich here, turkey, cheese, mustard, and she was sure the bread hadn’t gone bad yet. But she didn’t want to eat anything too heavy. A little upset that she had decided to be hungry at such an inconvenient time, Hope sighed and dejectedly fumbled around to snap one of the blueberry yogurts from the 4-pack.

  
  


The sharp plastic edges bit into her fingers like little teeth as she pawed at them, then finally cracked it free of its brethren. She stepped back and swung the door shut, then padded over to the utensil drawer to get a spoon. Hope was still too stubborn to turn on a light, wanting to spare her eyes the ordeal, and was having even more of a challenge after staring into the harsh fridge light. Her fingers brushed something that was _not_ the handle of the drawer, something curved and narrow that slipped from the counter and onto the floor with a clatter, deafening in the still house. 

  
  


Swearing, Hope bent down to pick up Geo’s  Vizualizer , hoping she hadn’t damaged it. The thought made her uncomforta ble beyond breaking something  of her son’s . This was one of the few pieces of Kelvin left,  and the only one that strictly belonged to Geo.

  
  


When he had first gone missing, s he had resisted change at first, clothes in the closet, shampoo in the bathroom, an ancient console and a pile of games in the living room, and there they stayed. But as time went on, they became more upsetting, no longer something to cling to, the promise of normality. She went back to work. Geo grew bigger; things were replaced, stored away where she couldn’t see them and remember  what she wasn’t going to have again.

  
  


Hope  huffed, pushing away the sad thoughts for now, and began to straighten.  S uddenly, there was a brilliant shard of light  green light in the lower corner of her vision. She froze in  her  half-crouch, trying to parse what her groggy brain had just seen. It had come from below, from her hand. She stared down at the visor, sitting innocently in her hand. Hope tilted them in her grasp, just slightly, and green light,  paler and bluer than the lens of the Vizualizer spilled across them in ripples.

  
  


Alright, that was weird, she thought, fear prickling hotly along her neck and spine. She had used it before.  She had used it recently, out of boredom, and when Kelvin had first brought them home to show her. There was nothing green and shiny like that in her kitchen. Slowly, she held the glasses, fingertips gently pinching it on either side, and held them up to her eyes.

  
  


There was a large glowing green creature staring at her with narrow red eyes, hovering with one gigantic claw on her table. It had no visible legs and its head and torso were covered with something blue and metallic. She stared. It stared back. Sweat trickled down the small of her back, legs trembling.  T he n she nodded to herself  even as the panic set in.

  
  


“Ah,” she said finally, lowering the glasses  slowly, heart pounding in her chest so loudly she could  almost hear it. 

  
  


Then she spun  on her heel and  went  sprinting away toward Geo’s room.  Hope hadn’t been very athletic even when she’d been younger, but in that moment she could have outrun even her husband as she pounded down the hall, nearly slipping on her bare feet as she turned to reach Geo’s door.

  
  


She threw herself inside and slammed the door shut, pressing her body back against it as if that could do anything to keep the creature out. Geo sat up in bed with a grunt and turned on the light. He squinted at her, hair sticking up in all directions,  fear and annoyance struggling for dominance over his expression.

  
  


“Mom?”  He croaked.

  
  


“Geo, I think there might be an alien in the kitchen,” she said, very calmly,  because what else could she say?

  
  


Surely, she should have made up some soothing half-truth, but how could you half-truly say there was a large green floaty thing in the kitchen? Hope didn’t spend much time thinking about that, she was trying to decide what needed to be done next. Leave, yes. Geo’s room had a window, they could just hop outside and call the authorities about their green home invader.

  
  


And then Geo would be taken away from her and Hope would be subjected to drug tests, psychiatrists, and possibly a judge. And the police. Hope didn’t get along well with the police.

  
  


Her son was staring at her, his panicked expression having melted into something like weary annoyance, as if he had woken her over a nightmare. “Oh, sorry, he likes to watch shows on the crime channel at night when everyone is asleep.”

  
  


She was sure she was thoroughly awake at the moment, but she couldn’t quite grasp what had just come out of Geo’s mouth. There had been no banging on the door, horrible noises, and no flashing lights, so they had enough time for a question, surely.

  
  


“He what?”

  
  


“Yeah,” Geo said, voice almost unrecognizable with sleep. “He won’t let me watch them, says they’re too violent, so he watches them at night.”

  
  


“The… the alien, Geo. We’re both talking about the alien?”

  
  


“His name is Omega-Xis,” Geo added calmly, rubbing at his eyes. “ Mega.  I’ve known him for a few months, he’s been living here. He’s made out of EM waves, so you can’t usually see him without the Vizualizer.”

  
  


Ah, of course,  how logical, it made perfect sense . Her son knew the alien, was friends with the alien, who was invisible, and had been living in her home for an indeterminate amount of time. Hope nodded slowly,  head spinning.

  
  


“I see. Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”

  
  


“That I brought a scary-looking alien to live in the house with us?”

  
  


“Yes, Geo, that.”

  
  


“Well, he’s invisible, and I… we were trying to figure out when to tell you. Things have been crazy lately,” Geo said, looking sheepish indeed with his shaggy bedhead.

  
  


“You’re taking this rather well, for someone who just got busted in the worst way possible.”

  
  


Geo shrugged and wiggled back into bed. Was he trying to get away from her? After this?  If her entire body hadn’t been filled to the brim with terror and confusion, she would have been annoyed.

  
  


“ Guess you’d find out sooner or later. Y ou’re taking it a lot better than we had hoped, actually,” he added with a nervous smile,  fluffing up his pillow pointedly.

  
  


“No,” she said quickly, her heartbeat slowing finally. “I am not. And you can’t just go back to sleep after telling me there’s an alien living in our house!”

  
  


“Mom, I have a math test in the morning,”  Geo said, the picture of innocence.

  
  


Oh, right, she had made him study for that this evening. He had a point, but didn’t real life aliens trump math tests just this once? Wait, no, absolutely not.Hope the mother would have grabbed Hope the individual by the shoulders and shook her violently had they not been the same person. Geo had only just started to really put effort into schoolwork again, and his grades had been reflecting that. No, aliens were not more important.

  
  


“ Mom … why don’t  _you_ talk to him?” Geo suggested. “I don’t have to be there, he can talk just fine. Then tomorrow after school I’ll tell you anything he left out.”

  
  


“Talk. To him.” Hope repeated the words, rolling them around on her tongue as if they were a foreign shape. 

  
  


Suddenly there was a rough male voice from the other side of the door. “Geo, I think your mother saw me!”

  
  


Geo sat up again, reluctantly dragged back into wakefulness. He let out a weary sigh and said, with finality: “She’s in here. Can you talk to her? You know I have that big test tomorrow.”

  
  


“Why are you pushing her off on me?!” The voice demanded indignantly,  with a hint of panic . “She’s  _your_ mother! What am I supposed to say?!”

  
  


Hope, her heart racing again, pulled the door open. Her instincts were screaming at her not to, but she did it anyway. She was not about to  look like a coward compared to  a pre-teen boy,  even if he was her son.

The door opened to a seemingly empty room,  dark and quiet , but now that she was aware he was suppose to be there, Hope could sense a slight change in the air. Did her skin feel more tingly? Did her tongue taste faintly of pennies? Was the temperature slightly warmer?

  
  


Was she losing her mind?

  
  


But then she remembered the Vizualizer, still held in her hand, and perched them on her nose. It appeared again, so close to her that she had to crane her head back to look at it—him, fully. She almost squeaked in terror, but it died in her throat. Ah, what good would it do anyway? If he wanted to kill her, he’d tear her throat out with his clawed hands before she could even scream. But he didn’t, he just floated there, menacingly,  as he argu ed with her son.  Her very calm, mildly annoyed son.  It didn’t quite have teeth, but the metal that made up its head came to little points. 

  
  


Hope blinked then, and realized they were talking and it could be important for her to be nosy right now, but she seemed to have caught the tail end of it. Omega-Xis was shaking his maned head, defeated, and she felt a pang of kinship with him. Geo was too good at winning when he wanted to be.

  
  


“—fine!” Said the alien, Omega-Xis,  and that was that.

  
  


Then he turned to her, and he looked her in the eye, and she stared up at him. Slowly, he seemed to shrink until they were more at eye level, and she realized he had simply lowered himself for her. He rubbed the back of his neck with one clawed hand and drifted down the hallway, back the way they had come. 

  
  


“Come on, Hope,  so princess can get his beauty sleep. L et’s go into the kitchen and get this over with. I’m missing  _Monk._ ”

  
  


Hope, bemused,  unstuck her feet from the floor after a few failed attempts, and  trailed along after him.  Kelvin had been mad about aliens, they had been the end of him, so the fact that  _Geo_ was the one now hiding a real live alien from her…  She had always considered them a real possibility, but seeing and believing were two different things. Also, she hadn’t truly believed they would be little green men.

  
  


Or big green creatures who floated, even.

  
  


  
  


By the time she had padded into the kitchen, Omega-Xis was already there,  drifting in front of the TV and watching a very old show. It was so old she had trouble recognizing some of the devices and appliances she saw. He turned to look at her, and how a giant glowing green thing could look sheepish, she wasn’t sure, but he managed.

  
  


She stood there, barefoot in her pajamas, about to have a serious conversation with a freeloading alien who had been smuggled into her house by her son. Her son, not her husband, who she had known would eventually try to smuggle something extraterrestrial into her home. No, she realized, she no longer felt scared, but empty. An emptiness that was slowly filling up with anger, like foam in a bottle of soda. 

  
  


“Can you eat and drink?” She asked finally. 

  
  


Her voice had gone hoarse from the tension in her throat. She cleared it and told her muscles to  _relax_ .

  
  


“I can. I don’t have to, but it feels funny and it’s not bad,” he said with a grunt, eyes flicking sideways to the TV.

  
  


It was very difficult to remain terrified of him when he was doing that. Good. Hope felt confident enough to turn her back on him and walk to the kitchenette and bent down to open the little cabinet  beside the fridge. She crouched on her haunches and pushed aside a bag of potatoes, gallons of water for cooking, and then finally her fingers touched cool aluminum. She pulled out her prize and turned back to find him watching her uncertainly.

  
  


“Would you like a beer?”

  
  


“Erm, no thank you. Maybe later.”

  
  


She nodded and set the two cans down on the table, cracking one open. “Right, well, Omega-Xis, my name is Hope Stelar, but I assume you know that given you’ve been living in my house for at least a month.”

  
  


His body seemed to flicker nervously.

  
  


“I’m going to sit here and drink my beer, and eat my yogurt, and you’re going to explain to me exactly how you wound up involved with my son.  Alright ?”

  
  


His mouth opened, then closed, then opened again. He looked at the screen, then back at her. “ Got it , but can I still watch my show?”

  
  


“That’s fine,” Hope said, and sat down at the table to peel off the lid on her yogurt.

  
  


If Geo thought her temper would be better by tomorrow afternoon, he was going to be sorely disappointed.

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve never written for SF; I enjoy the series, and played the games, but it’s not my favorite. But this plot bunny bit me yesterday evening, so I decided to write it. 
> 
> Please kudos if you enjoyed. And comments make me very, very happy!


End file.
